Gaming News Roundup – July 31

Dragon Ball Fighter Z Beta Delayed

As I reported last week, there will be a beta for the highly anticipated Dragon Ball Fighter Z. Sadly, right after that roundup went up, Bandai Namco decided to make me look like a big dumb idiot and delay the beta sign-ups until August 22nd with the beta commencing September 16-18. They’ve stated that the delay is due to them wanting to expand the pool of players that will be able to get in. It’s unfortunate, but I can only hope the decision was made for the better of the servers. We’ll just have to wait and see. Make sure to set your alarm.

Destiny 2 PC Beta On The Way

It looks like PC players will soon be able to get in on the Destiny 2 beta. Bungie has stated that the beta will start on August 28th for those that pre-ordered and August 29th for those that didn’t, but it will run until August 31st. With this news, they’ve also revealed requirements, make sure to check if your rig can handle it.

For Honor Getting Dedicated Servers

This week Ubisoft had the massive revelation that For Honor should have dedicated servers, which probably should have been the case on release. As some of you may know, For Honor has had a huge drop-off in its playerbase, with many of them citing the game’s lack of dedicated servers among other things. A peer-to-peer server is a system in which one player’s internet facilitates the match, presumably the player with the best internet. If the host were to leave the match, the game would stop, and the connection would migrate to another player. If the new host is living in Antarctica, you could expect a lot of lag and disappearing enemies. This server issue has been going on since February and while I’m glad to see that they’re making improvements, it may be too little too late.

“We want to improve the stability of the matches on 4 vs. 5,” Damien Kieken, For Honor’s director, wrote on the Ubisoft blog. “And we want to have an architecture that is more long term, that could help us more in the future for the things we want to do next.”

With dedicated servers, “You don’t have session host migration anymore,” Kieken said. “There is no game pausing when somebody leaves the session.”

Will this change bring back some of the people that abandoned the game? We’ll just have to see. You can read more about this change and other updates to the game on Ubisoft’s blog.

Blizzard Getting More Severe With Punishment System

With the rampant toxicity in the Overwatch community these days, it’s hard to enjoy the game this season. Let’s say you pick an off-meta character, now you’ve got your healer jumping off the map the whole game because they think you’re throwing. Let’s say you misused your ultimate, now you’ve got some dude screaming profanities in your ear, just slandering you. Well Blizzard is trying to fix that. They stated earlier this month that they were planning to implement some changes to the report and punishment system and now we’re hearing what the first of those changes will be.

From Overwatch Community Manager, Stephanie Johnson:

“We believe that our in-game reporting and player penalty system is one of our most important features, and it’s something we want to invest in significantly over the next year,” wrote Johnson. “To this end, effective immediately, we will be issuing increased penalties to players in response to verified reports of bad behavior. In Overwatch, that means anything from abusive chat, harassment, in-game spam, match inactivity (being intentionally AFK), and griefing. If you see someone engaging in any of these types of behaviors, report them. Players in violation will be silenced, suspended, or even banned from the game as a result.”

“We know that making Overwatch a truly welcoming environment is an ongoing process, and this is only the first step,” continued Johnson. “Over the next several months, we have plans to make additional improvements based on your feedback, including scaling competitive season bans, a notification system that will alert you when a player you’ve reported is actioned, and functionality that will allow us to more aggressively penalize players who attempt to abuse the in-game reporting tool.”

“We know that making Overwatch a truly welcoming environment is an ongoing process, and this is only the first step,” continued Johnson. “Over the next several months, we have plans to make additional improvements based on your feedback, including scaling competitive season bans, a notification system that will alert you when a player you’ve reported is actioned, and functionality that will allow us to more aggressively penalize players who attempt to abuse the in-game reporting tool.”

I am so glad to see that they’re working on ways to deal with some of the god awful community. Hopefully we see these put into place sooner rather than later because a lot of people are getting tired of it.

That’s the news for this week. If you missed last week’s roundup be sure to click here to get caught up. See you next week for another news roundup!